


Running to the Sea

by ocelot



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Masturbation, RivaMika Week, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 20:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1197741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocelot/pseuds/ocelot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief made her a stranger to herself, and a bedfellow to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running to the Sea

“Can I sleep here?”

Levi thought about telling her to go fuck herself. _Drink some warm milk I’m not your fucking mommy._

But she’d liked that. Sneering with practiced vulgarity, she had picked up a few things from him.

“You can have the bed.” Levi said nonchalantly.

“Are you sure?”

He could see her nipples through her shirt and hear the condescension in her voice.

“Would I have said so if I wasn’t sure?”

Mikasa rolled her eyes and slipped under the covers.

“What are you doing?” She asked softly.

“Making the couch,” He answered dully.

“Christ, there’s plenty of room in this bed.” Mikasa mumbled half asleep.  

There was something about his presence, his voice that comforted her. It shouldn’t have.    

“How long has it been since you’ve fucked anyone besides yourself?”

Levi snorted. “Go to sleep.”  

***

She was completely naked, but he felt more vulnerable fully clothed. Vulnerable, it was something he had only felt once before. Stripped of his beliefs and his pride and what little dignity he had left. More dignity than a street rat should have had, looking up with a dirty face at a chest decked out in medals.   

Her hair was draped over her shoulder and her eyes flickered with anticipation of the game. It was his turn to move. He looked at her like a little boy. Sleepy-eyed, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, and grinned wide…not like a little boy. She knew the difference between playful and predatory.

Some boys played with fire. Some boys played with girls who set the world on fire.

He was already hard. She ran her nails down his length, her thumb circling the head of his cock. Her cheek rested on his chest as she jerked him off.

She straddled his hips, rubbing herself against him. Faster as his breath hitched, his eyes narrowed. She was teasing him.

“I thought this was what you wanted.” She looked down at him sternly.

“It is,”

She smiled. “Good.”

She nibbled on his earlobe, licking down his neck to trace his clavicle with her tongue.   

Levi breathed heavily. Watching her through half-closed eyes and gripping his arm. He didn’t wake. His fingernails left bright red indentations in his skin. Her lips ghosted over the hollows.     

“Please.” He begged.

Levi cried out softly. He always woke up alone, cold and still hard – the blanket on the floor, his hand down his pants, sweat running down his spine.    

She was still asleep in his bed. She looked almost peaceful. He wondered what that felt like. Levi sighed, pulling the blanket over himself, and went back to sleep.

***

“I have nightmares too.” Her voice was low, lost among the night sky and the deluge. If he was a religious man he might have thought _God_ was trying to wash away their sins. Or drown them.  

“Or at least I used to. When I was little I could never go back to sleep after one. I would go to my parent’s room and sneak into their bed and lie there, between them, until morning. I think they knew I was there, they just never told me. They let it be my secret.”

“How did you get them to stop, the nightmares?”   

“I stopped sleeping,” Her mouth settled into a small smile. “I think I got too old for my demons.”

“You’re still young.”  

“To you maybe,”  

 “I don’t have nightmares.” Levi admitted louder than he should have. “I have dreams, about you.”

“What about me?” There was nothing shy about her smile.

“About fucking you,” His eyes flickered darkly over her.

“And am I good?” She could see him smirk through her eyelashes.  

“Better than good,” His hands were on her hips, dancing her back against the wall.

“Then close your eyes. And dream of me.” She kissed him and he never wanted her to stop.   

***

“Where were you last night?” Armin asked, but he knew. He fucking knew. He could smell the alcohol on her breath and see the shame in her eyes.

_Were you with him? Levi?_

But he didn’t ask. Just like Levi knew not to ask, “How’s Eren?”   

“He needed you.” He mouthed. “I needed you.”

His desperation was deep enough to drown in.

“Don’t you think I know that? I…don’t,” She had never been a runner, but she thought about running out that door and never looking back. “I feel guilty enough, okay?”

“Okay?” It wasn’t a question.

She had gone too far this time, backing him into a corner with flames for hands and acid for words.

“Okay?” Armin repeated. “How is any of this okay?”

“He’s not healing, he’ll probably never walk again and you’re what, sorry?”

“You don’t get to be the one who’s sorry.”  

She looked away from him, down at her hands gripping her knees. Her knuckles had turned white.

Eren shifted slightly, a small groan tumbling forth from his dry mouth.

_Great, you woke him up._  

“Can we talk about this later?”

Armin knew there was no later, but he nodded for Eren’s sake.  

“Eren, sit up. You have to eat.”

“I don’t want to.” Eren grumbled. His throat was raw from crying.   

“Eren, please,” Mikasa brushed his hair back and kissed his sweaty brow.    

“I need you to be strong, for me.”

Eren gripped her hand tightly, crushing his fingers against hers like they had when they were kids.

_I’m sorry I left you._

“I’ll stay tonight I promise.”

“No,” His voice was a murmur. “I don’t want you. I want Armin.”

She couldn’t stop the tears she’d been holding back.

***

The empty street howled with the blood of men and women alike. Young and old, they were all the same in death. Mikasa sank to the floor, pulling him down with her.

Grief knocked the wind out of her and broke her ribs. Every breath she drew hurt more than the last.

Levi sat with her in silence. As he had the previous night and the countless nights before – under the starless sky with a scratchy wool blanket and bottle of whiskey, stretched out in front of the fireplace with their shirts unbuttoned and their lips raw.      

Silence was easier to swallow than the truth. _I’m afraid I’m going to scare you away with how intensely I love you._

His tongue may not have cared for the truth, but he didn’t lie to her. Telling her it was going to be okay. They were well past okay.  

Levi lifted her chin up with the lightest of touches.

She looked at him dourly.

“That’s the Mikasa I know.”

“You don’t know me.”

“No?” He saw through her. His eyes burned away fears and his touch bruised parts of her she wasn’t comfortable showing in the light of day.

He saw himself in her. He used to think people didn’t change. That throughout the years they remained the same, standing true and tall to an effigy of self-endurance, but now he knew they changed every day. Like broken skin growing anew.

The past was scar-tissue and he had never liked dwelling on ugly things.

***

Levi could see the anger in her eyes, the sadness behind her smile. They were all fighting for another day, another chance to say those words. To feel what they had no right to feel – _love._ All the tomorrows couldn’t bring their hearts to a steady beat inside the cold and still hollows they had submitted to.     

“What are you fighting for?”

She was a force of nature. Her hands in the sky, pulling the stars down and wrapping them around him – he may have been rusted in the blood of the dead, but he glistened beautifully underneath her body.    

“To survive,” Her eyes were steel, but there was no resolve in her voice.

“What are _you_ fighting for?” She asked defensively.  

Levi didn’t say anything. What could he say? That he wanted to prove their deaths weren’t in vain, to see this war through, to win, to keep her safe, to keep her from becoming anymore like him.

 “I have someone to protect.” The truth fell from her lips like the coldest of rains.

“Don’t die for him,” He loved her, he did, but he wasn’t a school boy pining after her. He wouldn’t be dragged through the filthy bath waters of her insecurities.   

“What should I die for then?”

“Yourself,”  

Mikasa shook her head. “You couldn’t possibly understand. I don’t want to be alone. Being alone is a fate worse than death.”

He stilled the laughter clawing at his lungs.

“You’re not alone.” He rested his forehead against hers.

She possessed him. Lingering in the cracks he thought he had cemented over. He ached for her.    

Levi never thought of himself as romantic, but he dreamed of her. He spent fortnights lying awake, dreaming of her – upon wild lilies, the sun in her black hair, the sky flickering in her gray ocean eyes. She was the kind of waves that broke around dawn on cold ridges. Dry mouthed and sea sick.

She saw something she had never seen before in his washed out eyes, in the spider veins of pale grey and blue – _hope._ Disgusted and in love with her he begged her to stay.  

***

“What’s wrong with you, besides the obvious?”

Levi sank further back into the armchair. Drink in hand (whiskey neat), legs folded. “I didn’t know you were capable of joking.”

“I’m not incapable of it.”  

“They’re losing faith.” Levi took a breath. What he wanted was a drink. More than what was in his glass. “In me,”

“Not just in you, in everything.”

“I used to think we could win.”

Mikasa sighed. “Don’t tell me that’s self-pity in your voice.”

“Do you want my advice?”

He didn’t, but he was going to get it anyway.     

“Get up.”

For once her rage was soft-spoken. She pulled him to his feet only to push him back down. Crooked smile and moth eaten words, they never looked pretty in the roaring light of day.        

He knew not to get too close to the flames, but he wanted to be burned. 

“Look at me.” She breathed, brushing back his hair and kissing him softly.  

She was raw wrists and bated breath and the only thing he prayed to, on bended knee and broken back.

“We haven’t lost yet.” She sat in his lap, her hands undoing his belt and her mouth pressed against his ear.

“They need you, to be strong.” But she knew he didn’t care about the seemingly infinite _they._

“I need you.” She bit his lip, kissing down his jaw.   

***

She said “I love you” when she brushed his hair out of his eyes. When she stayed, wrapped in his arms, longer than she should have and longer every night after – way into the morning when the sun cast guilt in her heart. Her fingertips whispered it on his skin. She sighed it into his mouth.  

Her skin was a map of the words she never voiced and her eyes were the pitch black nights when he craved her mouth on his.

He lifted her up, her legs wrapping around him. The bar top was cold on her ass. But his body was warm against hers. Pressed close and held tight and telling her things words never could.

***

Levi could see the monster in everyone, waiting to surface. He saw it himself. Most days he couldn’t meet his reflection, but that didn’t change anything. He could feel it in his marrow.    

He wasn’t naïve enough to believe in lies. The greatest lie of all, hope. And he certainly wasn’t weak. Weak to the whim of his cock or the lull of a good night’s sleep, bottle in hand.    

But he was hungry. Starved for her company, her quiet eyes and quieter words, her hand almost touching his, but most of all for her smile that wasn’t there – he was desperate for impossible things.

He saw a monster in her, a bigger monster than in himself.  

The look of a killer lived inside her like a tired lover. It brushed back her hair and kissed her forehead. It would love her gently, quietly turning her bones to ash and her whispers to screams.

He didn’t want to win this fight just to lose in the end to his own demons.

“I hate you.” She muttered, leaning against the doorframe. She was half drunk, fully exhausted. 

“No, you don’t.”

“I wanted to.”

_I wanted you to too._

He smiled through pain that tasted like bottom-shelf whiskey.


End file.
